My wife and I were driving along Centennial Center Boulevard near Ann Rd when she remarked, “You know, this looks just like Kapolei...”

And she was right.

That street ­ just like so many others in Las Vegas ­ have the same stores on every corner. It’s one strip mall after another. Convenient? Yes!

Pretty? Well, not so much. But who cares, right? If we wanted charm we would be living in Portland. For now, it’s all about convenience. I don’t want to drive 20­30 minutes across town. I will take what’s next door instead.

But what if you are a retailer? How do you stand out when there are so many choices?

I’ve thought a lot about this as I cruise around town ­ imagining myself owning this small business here or that one over there.

This is what I would do:

1. Do a stellar job. At the end of the day, if you do good work or provide a good product or service, people will find you and come to you ­ even if you are a whole in the wall in a back alley. Nurture the reviews.

2. Beef up my online presence. People on their smart phones. So that’s where you should be, too. Make sure your website, social profiles and review platforms are current and accurate. Fresh is best. (And if you don’t yet have a mobile website, get one ASAP.)

3. Optimize your website for search engines. We call that SEO. Search engine optimization. Look, if you rank high in the search engines, you will have so much business you won’t have time for articles like this one. Find an SEO guru. Have him/her show what they can do and get going with being #1 on Google. I have never seen SEO not work. I have only seen people give up too soon.

By the way, if you’re not yet dominating the search engines, be sure to use PPC (pay­per­click) advertising. This will help keep your sales humming every step of the way.